Closing
address to Labour Party Congress

This congress has
been about organising to earn the right to lead a government
for a fourth successive term.

Let us remind ourselves
how big an ask that is. No-one has done this since 1969,
and then it was in part an accident of circumstances. No
Labour Government has done this since 1946 when nearly all
of our candidates at this year’s election were not yet
born.

We face a mood which I have likened to a game of
beach cricket. The surveys tell us that some people think
it’s only fair somebody else has a bat.

We face a
media mood that tends to want some new excitement.

We face
an opposition desperately hungry for power, enormously
well-financed, and willing to make any promise, break any
principle, to get into power.

It is a steep mountain we
have to climb to win.

And we can, and will, and must do
it. It helps to have easily the country’s best
mountaineering politician as our leader. Helen Clark knows
how to climb real and political mountains.

It helps to
have a new and reinvigorated team with the best set of young
candidates coming through we have seen in a generation.

It
helps to have a record of achievement of which we are proud
and which has more than delivered on our promises.

It
helps to have stood for our country’s independence and
integrity, to have helped where we can and should and to
have stood aside when to do otherwise was wrong.

It helps
to have the policies for the future, a vision for a nation
which is united in its diversity, strong in helping the
weak, proud in righting the wrong ways of the past, humble
about the land we are so fortunate to have the duty of
caring for, striving to improve our quality of life for
all.

And it helps to have a tradition and values and
principles which are grounded in our belief in our essential
equality and in the right of all of us to the security to
protect and nourish and the opportunity to succeed and
flourish.

So how do we earn that right to lead a
government for a fourth term? In four words it is
competence, record, alternative, and future.

One of the
great strengths of this Helen Clark led government has been
both its discipline and its performance. We have been by
any measure a highly competent government.

Of course there
have been some rocky passages. 2007 bought more than its
fair share. But the sign of a competent government is its
ability to move beyond those episodes as we have done this
year.

At all times the discipline of Cabinet and Caucus
has held strong. We have remained united.

Our leadership
has been superb. Helen is a significant international
figure. People know the country is in safe hands, that any
crisis will be met with firmness and clarity, not
panic.

Our record is unmatched. We are proud that what we
have done has been what Labour governments are there to do.
We are a Labour government in the great traditions of the
past.

Just look at what we have done!

Firstly, and above
all, we have changed the assumptions about what level of
employment we can expect. For four years now the level of
unemployment has remained below four per cent.

And that
has not been bought at the price of simply freezing people
out of the labour market. Participation rates in the labour
market continue to be sustained at record levels.

Everyone here today from provincial New
Zealand is particularly well aware of what that has meant.
Towns and cities which seemed to be in perpetual decline in
the 1990’s are now spruced up, confident, and
growing.

Indeed, New Zealand as a whole has enjoyed the
longest period of economic expansion in the last sixty
years. Annual average growth has been a full percentage
point higher than the OECD average since 1999.

We have
built the infrastructure to sustain that growth. We’ve
seen the biggest road building programme in living memory.
We’ve increased public transport spending by - 900 per
cent - with particular and spectacular growth in usage in
Auckland. And we are revitalising rail.

We have cut taxes
on business and introduced research and development tax
credits to encourage the private sector to catch up with
developed world norms.

We have moved to mandate and
support the necessary acceleration in investment in
telecommunications infrastructure where again the private
sector by itself has not proved adequate to the task.

We
have massively invested in and refocused our education
system – from 20 hours free early childhood education to
new programmes for literacy and numeracy to the introduction
of a whole new achievement based qualifications system in
secondary schools to a complete revision of the funding
model for tertiary education to drive greater quality and
relevance.

We have taken the most dramatic moves in well
over thirty years to increase our level of savings and to
increase our ability to fund our own investment. On top of
the New Zealand Superannuation Fund we have now built
KiwiSaver, arguably the most successful initiative in
voluntary savings anywhere in the world.

As of the latest
date we have 542,338 KiwiSavers. And all of the naysayers
on the right, the left and the centre have been proved
wrong.

Mr Key said KiwiSaver would fail. It’s boomed.
Some said it would only be for ageing wealthy white males.
Wrong again. A majority of KiwiSavers are women. After the
initial influx of older workers opting into KiwiSaver the
great bulk of new enrolments are under 45 with getting on
for 40 per cent under 35. And the income spread of
KiwiSavers is becoming wider all the time with more and more
Kiwis of modest means realising this is their best chance of
a better standard of living in retirement.

The economic
success we have enjoyed has enabled us to address core
underlying social problems in a way we have not seen since
at least the time of the Third Labour Government in the
early 1970’s.

We’ve restored the level of New Zealand
Superannuation. We’ve massively increased the incomes of
many families in New Zealand with the Working for Families
programme.

We’ve reintroduced income related state
house rentals, reduced the cost of going to the doctor,
reduced the cost of prescriptions, controlled tertiary fees,
abolished interest on student loans from those staying in
New Zealand, massively improved the rates rebates scheme,
boosted elective surgery, and rolled out new programmes for
primary care for children and young people.

Already this
year we have seen major new initiatives. We have announced
new spending of $446 million over four years to fully fund
the work of non-government organisations delivering
essential services in areas such as parenting programmes,
mentoring at risk youth, family violence prevention, and
victim support.

We’ve announced a $700 million Fast
Forward fund to achieve a step shift in our investment in
research and development to underpin expanding sustainable
primary sector industries including higher value
production.

And I can’t help noting that we have
achieved a new momentum in Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations
which has our opponents floundering for criticism.

We are
on the verge of a historic deal to settle the Central North
Island forest claims. We are well-advanced on a settlement
of the Waikato river claims which will also lead to the
restoration of the state of the river. We are close to
final settlement of the Wellington Tenths Trust claims and
are engaged in intensive negotiations around the rest of the
Wellington area and the top of the South Island claims. We
have heads of agreement on major foreshore and seabed claims
while other such claims are progressing.

And all Mr Key
can say about the Central North Island forest deal is to say
it will come apart. Obviously he hopes it will.

Nothing
better sums up his failure to grasp the challenge of his
pretence of being a Prime Minister in waiting. If he were
really then he would back those negotiations.

But Mr Key
is a politician who is proving to be very much less than the
sum of his parts.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that
in example after example he throws his principles aside so
he can tell people what he thinks they want to hear.

In
his own words he sees his period as a child in a state house
as “a great marketing ploy”. But then he said of the
Hobsonville development that it would be “just a bunch of
state houses”.

The fact is Mr Key is slippery on
everything – from where he lives, which may not be that
important – to what he believes, which very definitely
is.

He says he is ambitious for his country but gives the
impression that all the ambition is for him.

- A man who
was a university student in 1981 but can’t remember his
views on the Springbok tour

- A man who couldn’t
remember supporting the war in Iraq but did

- A man who
thought the war in Iraq was over

- A man who said to Gay
NZ he had no problems with civil unions but was only too
happy to explain to Investigate magazine why he voted
against them

- A man who said there needed to be
protection for people in the prostitution industry but voted
against it

- A man who thought climate change was a hoax
and now claims to have always been a true believer but is
looking for any excuse to vote against doing anything about
it

- A man who did say he would love to see wages drop and
then organised the persecution of the journalist who dared
to report it

- A man who couldn’t remember National’s
policy on a deadline for Treaty settlements and then
reaffirmed it

- A man who said a National government would
delay tax cuts to 2010 then said he was flexible and then
said 2009, again all in the space of a few days

- A man
who supported a compromise on the Trans-Tasman Therapeutics
Bill and then opposed it

- A man who said there would be
no restrictions on tertiary fee increases and then said that
was factually incorrect

- A man who said KiwiSaver was
fundamentally flawed and then said “it has probably gonna
be successful”.

- And a man who likes to proclaim his
economic credentials on the basis of the kind of moneymaking
that has brought us the credit crunch but whose coherence on
matters economic can be summed up in the following quote:

“Um, I was, I was out there actually being a bit
negative, or saying, saying, you know, look, I was a bit
concerned about the, the economy, but I mean one of the
things, and I often say this to business audiences
particularly when I get up is that, look, I it’s very easy
when you’re the leader of the opposition to, sort of, see
shadows because, you know, quite honestly in weaker economic
conditions, Governments often get booted out, and, um, so
you’ve got to be careful you don’t get too negative on
things when you’re an opposition politician, because you
can, you can see bad things in, in a lot of things, and that
may not always, you know, always be right, so,
um…..”

A man, indeed, who sadly admitted the other day
he has no personal views these days and is just the “voice
piece, if you like… of the National Party”.

By his own
admission then, a founder member of the hollow men’s club,
a cipher.

And behind him aren’t just the merchant banks
he has been so busy talking too so often over the recent
months, those waiting in the wings to buy a piece of the
action that we call our country, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

In
fact, there is a growing realisation that behind Mr Key is a
weird collection of has beens and never will bes. Dr
Lockwood Smith believes the world is cooling, not warming.
This is a result, no doubt, of the fact that he is the one
politician who could never be accused of too much
cover-up.

Now that Tony Ryall has lost the Hawkes Bay
District Health Board he has no friends to play with;
Katherine Rich has been replaced by Anne Tolley as education
spokesperson. Mrs Tolley thinks internal assessment is
carried out by doctors; Mr English backs Mr Key to the hilt,
provided the knife is long enough; Mr Power remains the next
leader but three; and the rest of them are not even famous
in their own dreams.

The fact is that while at times
National has looked as though it has learnt to be an
opposition it shows no sign it has learnt how to be a
government.

And with Slippery John in charge there is no
sign it ever will.

But the future cannot be ours by
default. We have to earn it. And we do that best of all by
doing what National cannot – being clear about where we
want to go and how to get there.

Our aim, quite simply, is
to build a sustainable economy and society. One that does
not rest upon the exploitation of the many by the few. One
that cares for our environment and means that we leave real
choices to our children and grand children.

One that
provides fulfilling jobs for all who seek them and real
support for those who cannot, that recognises the costs of
raising a family, that honours and celebrates our
differences, that sees education as a means of self
fulfilment and the path to success, that brings together,
not pushes apart, that rejects the view that to succeed you
must climb over others to do so.

A New Zealand of
security and opportunity whose place in the world is that of
a self-confident nation grounded in its own identity but
reaching out to others. A New Zealand which is great in its
smallness, modest in its boldness, sharing in its
uniqueness.

It is this complex of aspirations and values
and ideals which has to guide our actions.

We know that
high interest rates and rising food and petrol prices and
the long housing boom have caused problems for many families
and individuals. The answer is not to blame immigrants or
demonise public servants or to bring back legalised assault
on children.

It is to manage the economy sensibly so
interest rates can fall. It is to develop intelligent
interventions in the housing market to help first
homeowners. It is to refresh the Working for Families
programme as resources allow.

And it is to bring in a
programme of staged personal tax cuts which is designed to
give a dividend and a fair share to all, not just to those
at the top end of the income scale.

But it is also to keep
addressing those other costs that people bear: the cost of
health and the cost of education which governments can
directly affect.

We know that, like all developed
economies, we rest upon a system of production which is
unsustainable over the long term. That is why
sustainability is at the heart of the Fast Forward fund for
primary sector research and development.

That is why there
is an absolute focus on renewable energy development,
retrofitting existing houses, introducing biofuels. Most
importantly, of course, we need to bring in a comprehensive
emissions trading scheme that will put us on the path to
meeting our Kyoto obligations.

At the same time, we have
to clean up our rivers and lakes, manage our waste streams
better, and walk the talk of clean and green.

We know that
too many of our young people still fail to realise their
full potential, disengage from school early and, in too many
cases, end up in what is called the justice system.

The
answer is not to try to pick on a few and throw the book at
people who gave up reading a long time since. It is to
change our secondary school system to one which is focussed
on the individual learner so that all young people retain
and develop a thirst for learning and achievement. That is
what is at the heart of Schools Plus, not an attempt to
dragoon the unwilling into more years of
underachievement.

Schools Plus and a new integrated
workplace skills strategy will link up with our other
educational reforms to create a network of achievement to
help build a knowledge nation.

We know that to build such
a nation we must accelerate the provision and uptake of high
speed broadband to the office, the factory, the farm, and
the home.

We will need billions of dollars of additional
investment to meet our ambitions in this respect. The great
bulk of this will, and should, come from the private sector.
But the Government can act intelligently to leverage that
required level of investment and we will.

New Zealand
cannot afford our plans for the future and our achievements
to be put at risk by a National Party which gets into
difficulty wherever it announces a policy, a National Party
which has opposed every one of those major achievements but
claims it won’t change them, a National Party whose
slippery leader can’t get a firm grip on himself let alone
the process of government.

Of course, once you’ve
rejected the idea that honesty is the best policy it is hard
then to have any others!

We have transformed this nation
in the last eight and a half years. We are wealthier, more
employed, better educated, and higher paid.

We have moved
down the path towards a more sustainable economy. We have
better working conditions, longer life expectancy, longer
holidays, cheaper health care, reduced crime rates,
sustainable superannuation, increasing work-based savings,
and a stronger national identity.

To win this year’s
election we have to do just one thing: to make sure the
people understand the difference between Labour and
National.

If we can do that then we can win. New
Zealanders want a fairer society, they want fair shares
whether by way of tax cuts or social services, they want
full employment, they want a government they can trust to be
firm in its principles and in its defence of our national
interests at home and abroad.

That is what a Labour-led
Government has, can, and will deliver.

We go out of this
hall, which has resonated to Labour Party speeches for
decades, renewed in our determination to campaign for the
re-election of Helen Clark as Prime Minister of a Labour-led
Government.

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